Fine Time Massachusetts: Judges, Poor People, and Debtors Prison in the 21St Century
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SENATE………………………………………..No. 2504 The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Report of the SENATE COMMITTEE ON POST AUDIT AND OVERSIGHT entitled Fine Time Massachusetts: Judges, Poor People, and Debtors’ Prison in the 21st Century (under the provisions of Section 63 of Chapter 3 of the General Laws, as most recently amended by Chapter 557 of the Acts of 1986) November 7, 2016 1 The Commonwealth of Massachusetts MASSACHUSETTS SENATE Chairman SENATOR MICHAEL J. BARRETT SENATE COMMITTEE ON Third Middlesex District POST AUDIT AND OVERSIGHT STATE HOUSE, ROOM 416 Vice Chairman BOSTON, MA 02133-1054 LABOR AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT TEL. (617) 722-1572 FAX: (617)-626-0898 [email protected] WWW.MASENATE.GOV October 28, 2016 Mr. William F. Welch, Clerk of the Senate State House, Room 335 Boston, MA 02133 Dear Clerk Welch, Pursuant to M.G.L. Chapter 3, Section 63, as most recently amended by Chapter 557 of the Acts of 1986, the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight respectfully submits to the full Senate the following report: Fine Time Massachusetts: Judges, Poor People, and Debtors Prison in the 21st Century. This report is based on research by the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight, including a public hearing held by the Committee on July 28, 2016 where the Committee heard testimony from the Chief Justice of the District Court, the Commissioner of Probation, and others. At the hearing, we heard from one individual who had been jailed due to his failure to pay court-ordered fines and fees. In this report, we retell his story and examine the cases of 104 other individuals who faced similar circumstances in 2015. The report presents the Committee’s findings, as well as several recommendations for the Legislature and the Judiciary to ensure fairness in the collection of criminal justice fines, fees, and costs. If the Legislature and the Judiciary employ these recommendations, they will make great strides towards ensuring a more just result for our poorest defendants. Respectfully filed by the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight, Senator Michael J. Barrett, Chair Senator Jason M. Lewis Senator Michael O. Moore Senator Bruce E. Tarr Members of the Massachusetts State Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight Michael Barrett, Chair Benjamin Downing, Vice Chair Ryan Fattman Jason Lewis Michael Moore Bruce Tarr James Welch Staff to the Committee Samuel Anderson Brendan Berger Cyntia Howard Rosie Hunter Edward Mason 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................4 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................5 The Story of James K .......................................................................................................................6 Fine Time Massachusetts: The Data ..............................................................................................10 Findings: The Allegations That First Brought People into Court ..............................................11 Findings: The Financial Obligations That Piled Up .................................................................. 12 Findings: The Hearings That Culminated in Fine Time ........................................................... 13 Findings: Fine Time Ordered and Fine Time Served ................................................................ 15 Fine Time Massachusetts: Discussion and Recommendations ......................................................16 The Legislature and the Executive .............................................................................................17 The Judiciary ............................................................................................................................. 20 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................25 3 Acknowledgments This investigation would not have succeeded without cooperation and help from those on the front lines of the Massachusetts criminal justice system. To the individuals named below and the exceptional people who work for them, the members and staff of the Committee express their heartfelt thanks. We acknowledge the steadfast commitment of -- Ralph Gants, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Paula Carey, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Trial Court Paul Dawley, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts District Court Edward Dolan, Commissioner, Massachusetts Office of Probation Thomas Turco, Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Corrections William Brownsberger, Mass. State Senator (D-Belmont) and Senate Chair, Joint Committee on the Judiciary Mary Keefe, Mass. State Representative (D-Worcester) The Elected County Sheriffs of Massachusetts Michael Ashe, Sheriff, Hampden County Michael Bellotti, Sheriff, Norfolk County Thomas Bowler, Sheriff, Berkshire County Frank Cousins, Sheriff, Essex County James Cummings, Sheriff, Barnstable County Christopher Donelan, Sheriff, Franklin County Lewis Evangelidis, Sheriff, Worcester County Robert Garvey, Sheriff, Hampshire County Thomas Hodgson, Sheriff, Bristol County Peter Koutoujian, Sheriff, Middlesex County Michael McCormack, Sheriff, Dukes County Joseph McDonald Jr., Sheriff, Plymouth County James Perelman, Sheriff, Nantucket County Steven Tompkins, Sheriff, Suffolk County Anthony Benedetti, Chief Counsel, Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services Cassandra Bensahih, Executive Director, Ex-Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement Leslie Walker, Executive Director, Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts 4 Introduction In December 2015, the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight opened an inquiry into a little-noticed aspect of Massachusetts criminal justice – specifically, into the fines, fees, court costs, and other assessments imposed on defendants as they move through our courts and corrections systems. This inquiry is ongoing. In preparing for an initial public hearing on the subject, Committee members and staff met and interviewed the individual identified in these pages as James K. At the hearing, held July 28, 2016, James K recounted his story to senators, staff, and others in attendance. The crux of it was an apparently aggressive effort by a judge to bring in revenue -- or else -- from a defendant who was obviously and desperately poor, an effort that ended with the judge’s ordering the defendant -- James K -- to “work off” his obligations by going to jail. His experience did not seem to be isolated, James told the Committee. Poor offenders he met during the 36 days he spent incarcerated at the Worcester County Jail referred to his situation by a popular local nickname: “fine time.” This report investigates “fine time” in Massachusetts. 5 The Story of James K On April 8, 2015, a twenty-seven-year-old homeless man named James K1 stood before a judge for all of forty-five seconds in a courtroom in Dudley, Massachusetts. James owed $1,100 in fines and fees on an old criminal case. He had come almost a thousand miles to square things up. He succeeded, although not in the way he hoped. He told the judge he was poor, and the judge responded: OK. All right, he’s gonna be surrendered on the fines. He’ll be incarcerated, surrendered on the fines. Thank you, sir. … Thirty dollars a day they’re gonna give you at the jail, OK? James was now enmeshed in an obscure arrangement known informally as “fine time.” In Massachusetts, when a person fails to pay off his monetary obligations in a criminal case, a judge has the option of sending him to jail to “work off” what he owes at the rate of $30 per day. James, who did not spend a single day in jail on the criminal charges that first brought him into the district court, ended up spending 36 days in jail on fine time. Fine time is the extreme result of a byzantine structure of criminal fines, fees and assessments upon which the Massachusetts criminal justice system is financially dependent. Though doing so may entail significant hardship, most people who owe money to a court find a way to pay off the obligations without languishing in a jail cell. But some, like James, simply cannot come up with the money. The story that follows is his. Yet, as this investigation found, it is not unique. A Troubled Past In 2006, James, just eighteen years old, moved from New York City to the Worcester area. Lacking an education or job skills, he turned to selling drugs to survive. In February 2007, just four days after his nineteenth birthday, a Charlton police detective caught him with cocaine. He was arraigned in Dudley District Court on drug charges and, because he was indigent, was given a state-supplied lawyer and assessed a $150 indigent counsel fee, which he paid. The following month, after James failed to show up for a court hearing, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest. James, barely an adult but amply in trouble, had moved back to the New York City area. Three months after missing his court date in Dudley, he was arrested and jailed for a bank robbery in 1 The Committee conducted several interviews with James K and checked his account against records maintained by the Massachusetts courts. He has asked that his last name not appear in this report. 6 Queens. He spent the next four years in federal custody, first for the bank robbery and then for an unrelated assault on a correctional officer. Looking